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also usefully consult the spotted history of the discipline in the first
part of Brevard Childs's latest opus.3 Because so many of the crucial
issues turn at least in some measure on one's understanding of the
relationship between the Testaments, the second edition of David
Baker's book is also profitable reading.4 A host of other historical surveys is available.5
While not ignoring the historical development of biblical theology, I shall deal with the subject somewhat more topically. I shall
(1) begin by outlining the principal competing definitions of biblical
theology, (2) elucidate the essential components of an approach to
biblical theology that I judge viable, and (3) wind up by sketching the
contemporary challenges of biblical theology.
I. COMPETING DEFINITIONS OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
Different approaches to biblical theology may be analyzed in several
ways. What follows is simply one useful breakdown. The definitions
are not all mutually exclusive (i.e., some biblical theologians implicitly adopt more than one of the following definitions). Nevertheless,
the distinctions are heuristically useful, because other biblical theologians will put asunder what their colleagures, if not God himself,
have joined together. Moreover, we shall see that there are several
subcategories lurking under most of these definitions.
(1) Biblical theology is to be identified with systematic or dogmatic
theology. This was the assumption, of course, before two or three
centuries ago. It would be the height of arrogance to argue that before the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth
century the church knew nothing of biblical theology. If one has a
canon of books (biblia) on the basis of which one seeks to develop a
theology, one is constructing a "biblical" theology in some sense. As
Scobie rightly insists, "The most basic problem of biblical theology in
any age is that of reconciling the desire for a uniform and consistent
set of beliefs with the manifest diversity of the Bible."6 Whether the
church developed the classic fourfold sense of Scripture, or (as in
post-Reformation Protestantism) compiled its lists of dicta probantia
3. Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological
Reflections on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 3-51.
4. David L. Baker, Two Testaments, One Bible: A Study of the Theological Relationship
Between the Old and New Testaments (rev. ed.; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1991).
5. E.g., H.-J. Kraus, Die biblische Theologie: Ihre Geschichte und Problematik (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970); W. Harrington, The Path of Biblical Theology (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1973); H. G. Reventlow, Problems of Biblical Theology
in the Twentieth Century (Philadlephia: Fortress, 1977); James Smart, The Past, Present
and Future of Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979); M. Oeming, Gesamtbiblische Theologie der Gegenwart (2d ed.; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1987).
6. Scobie, "New Directions," 4.
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to support its doctrine, it was trying not only to make sense of the
Bible in all its diversity but also to display its univocal message.
Indeed, the first known use of the expression "biblical theology" referred to just such a list of proof-texts.7 It is altogether appropriate,
then, that we acknowledge that biblical theology has been with us as
long as reflection on Scripture has been with us. But it is also true to
say that in this lengthy period before the rise of modern historical
consciousness, the church did not make two distinctions that most
of us now take to be axiomatic. First, the church did not then clearly
articulate a distinction between church doctrine, dogmatic theology
if you will, and biblical theology. To articulate the latter was to prescribe the former. Second, the church did not then clearly articulate a
distinction between biblical theology and systematic theology. This
does not mean that the church could not distinguish between "before" and "after," between earlier and later biblical books, between
Old and New Testaments. It means, rather, that the solutions it advanced to make the Bible say one thing tended to be logical and
systematic, i.e., atemporal, rather than integrally dependent on the
Bible's developing story line forged across time.
This first definition of biblical theology is not restricted to the
period before 1700. Karl Barth's dogmatic theology can be understood as a biblical theology that is in violent reaction against the historical criticism and theological reductionism of his day. In a recent
essay drawing on Bernard Lonergan, A. James Reimer argues that
biblical and systematic theology are not disjunctive disciplines but
functional specialties within the discipline of Christian theology.8
Perhaps we may extend this definition of biblical theology to
include Ben C. Ollenburger, who does not equate biblical and systematic theology, but who argues that the distinction between them
is of little importance. Picking up a phrase from Jeffrey Stout, he
places both biblical and systematic theology within the "logical space
of normative discourse," both disciplines instances of "the church's
self-critical discursive practice."9 It is not that Ollenburger cannot
distinguish between biblical and systematic theology, nor even that
he thinks there is a danger of the former collapsing into the latter.
Rather, he holds that the distinction is not essential.10 Biblical theology, he contends, arose because systematic theology was sacrificing
7. W. J. Christmann, Teutsche biblische Theologie, published in 1629. There is no
extant copy. I am indebted to Scobie for this information ("Challenge," 32-33).
8. A. James Reimer, "Biblical and Systematic Theology as Functional Specialties:
Their Distinction and Relation," So Wide a Sea: Essays on Biblical and Systematic Theology
(ed. Ben C. Ollenburger; Elkhart: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1991) 37-58.
9. "Biblical and Systematic Theology: Constructing a Relation," So Wide a Sea,
111-45; and the Preface, p. ix.
10. Ibid. 132.
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the Messiah, but the study is largely structured to follow the progress of the Bible's story line, read at face value.18 Fuller's latest book
seeks to set out The Unity of the Bible.19 At a more popular level, one
thinks of some of the work of Goldsworthy.20 Similarly, some recent
German discussion focuses on the desirability of "eine gesamtbiblische Theologie."21 Scobie's insistence that biblical theology is properly an intermediate discipline between a narrowly historical study of
the Bible, on the one hand, and systematic theology, on the other,22
shares something of Gabler's perspective. It seems to me that at many
levels the best forms of canonical theology also belong under this
second definition of biblical theology, even if their rationale has some
independent features.23
Reflecting on this second definition of biblical theology, I cannot refrain from citing a lengthy and insightful passage in Warfield,
to which Richard Lints has recently drawn attention.24 Warfield,
Lints says, suggests that the distinctively
new discipline of "biblical theology" came to us indeed wrapped in the
swaddling clothes of rationalism and it was rocked in the cradle of the
Hegelian recasting of Christianity; it did not present at first, therefore,
a very engaging countenance and seemed to find for a time its pleasure in setting the prophets and apostles by the ears. But already in
the hands of men like Schmid and Oehler it began to show that it was
born to better things. And now as it grows to a more mature form and
begins to overtake the tasks that belong to its adulthood, it bids fair to
mark a new era in theological investigation by making known to us
the revelation of God geneticallythat is, by laying it before us in the
stages of its growth and its several stadia of development. If men have
hitherto been content to contemplate the counsel of the Most High
only in its final statelaid out before them as it were, in a map
hereafter it seems that they are to consider it by perference in its
stages, in its vital processes of growth and maturing. Obviously a
much higher form of knowledge is thus laid open to us; and were this
18. Gerard Van Groningen, Messianic Revelation in the Old Testament (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1990).
19. Daniel P. Fuller, The Unity of the Bible: Unfolding God's Plan for Humanity
(Grand Rapids; Zondervan, 1992).
20. E.g., G. Goldsworthy, According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the
Bible (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1991).
21. Cf. Oeming, Gesamtbiblische Theologie der Gegenwart.
22. Especially in his Tyndale Bulletin articles, already cited.
23. The most important work here is that of Childs, Biblical Theology.
24. Richard Lints, "Two Theologies or One? Warfield and Vos on the Nature of
Theology," WTJ 54 (1992) 235-53, esp pp. 252-53, referring to Benjamin B. Warfield,
"The Century's Progress in Biblical Knowledge," usefully reprinted in Selected Shorter
Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield (ed. Richard Gaffin; Nutley: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1970) 2.12 from an original in Homiletic Review 39 (1900) 195-201, esp 200-201.
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discipline the sole gift of the 19th century to the Christian student, she
would by it alone have made good a claim on his permanent gratitude.
(3) Biblical theology is the theology of various biblical corpora or strata.
This third definition, as we have just seen, developed from the second. The more scholars worked at a merely descriptive level, with
no concern or responsibility to synthesize and describe what is normative, the more the diversities in the biblical material achieved
prominence. The first and most obvious divison is that between the
Testaments. As early as 1796 the first Old Testament theology was
produced, followed a few years later by the first New Testament
theology.25 Although biblical theologiesthat is, theologies of the
entire Bible, definition #2continued to be written for the next half
century, the project was largely abandoned in the second half of the
nineteenth century. Even conservative scholars could manage no more
than Old Testament or New Testament theologies, which of course are
not at all "biblical" by the light of the second definitioneven though
some of the writers of these "one Testament" theologies worked
within a conceptual framework that allowed for "whole Bible" biblical
theology (e.g., Hoffmann, as we have seen). Still, the move was toward the part, not the whole. We are thus forced back to the third
definition.
By the end of the nineteenth century the most influential biblical theologians (if we may call them that) were not engaging in
much more than history-of-religions parallelomania (to use Sandmel's famous neologism). The corpora being studied were smaller and
smaller: one could not, it was argued, responsibly speak of New Testament or Old Testament theology (let alone biblical theology): the
Old Testament, for instance, includes many disparate theologies. Witness the marvelous cynicism betrayed in W. Wrede's most famous title
on this subject: ber Aufgabe und Methode der sogennanten neutestamentliche Theologie.26 This is what Scobie calls "a completely independent
Biblical Theology"that is, independent of any acknowledged Christian dogmatic presuppositions, of any concern to seek out what is
normative or even helpful for the Christian church.27 For some decades biblical theology largely self-destructed.
The rise of the so-called biblical theology movement turned the
clock back by generating many Old Testament and New Testament
theologies (third definition). Some of these have been so influential
that their principal ideas have been recycled and modified in more
25. G. L. Bauer, Theologie des Alten Testaments (Leipzig: Weygand, 1796); Bauer,
Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments (2 vols.; Leipzig: Weygand, 1800-1802).
26. Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1897.
27. Scobie, "Challenge," 39.
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recent works. For instance, Eichrodt's Old Testament theology centered on the notion of the covenant,28 and some of its main theses
have been defended or adapted by Roger Beckwith.29 Despite the
fact that the biblical theology movement had its obituaries prepared
by several scholars, especially Childs,30 theologies of the Old and
New Testaments continue to appear with fair regularity. Some of
these, like the very recent work by Preuss,31 still choose a central or
organizing theme (in his case, election). New Testament theologies,
however, with only rare exceptions, organize their material almost
exclusively according to corpus. Neither approach is a biblical ("gesamtbiblische") theology in the second sense; both approaches generate
biblical theologies only in the third sense. But the latter, common in
the New Testament theologies, may actually magnify the diversity
of the New Testament corpora, or purport to discover only the
thinnest lines of theological connection among those corpora. One
thinks of Dunn's suggestion that what holds together the christological perspectives of the New Testament documents is nothing more
than the shared conviction that the pre-passion Jesus and the postresurrection Jesus are one and the same.32 In the so-called new Tbingen school, Gese and Stuhlmacher hew an independent path. Gese
argues that in the time of Jesus and of the writers of the New Testament there was still no closed Old Testament canon. Therefore biblical theology must be understood to deal with the process of tradition
viewed as a wholenot with earlier forms, or later forms, or canonical forms.33 Similarly, Stuhlmacher, using the law as a sample topic
appropriate to this notion of biblical theology, traces developing and
quite differing concepts of law through both Testaments.34 In still
more skeptical guise, a New Testament theology may not only high28. Walter Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament (2 vols.; Philadelphia: Westminster, ET 1961-1967).
29. Roger T. Beckwith, "The Unity and Diversity of God's Covenants," TynBul 38
(1987) 93-118.
30. Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970).
31. Horst Dietrich Preuss, Theologie des Alten Testaments. Vol. 1: JHWH's erwhlendes und verpflichtendes Handeln (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1991).
32. James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the
Character of Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977). Cf. my "Unity and
Diversity in the New Testament: The Possibility of Systematic Theology," Scripture and
Truth (ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983; repr.
Baker, 1992) 61-95.
33. H. Gese, Essays on Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981).
34. R Stuhlmacher, "The Law as a Topic of Biblical Theology," Reconciliation, Law
and Righteousness (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 110-33. For a more rigorous and thorough treatment of the move from Jesus to Paul, focusing on but not restricting itself to
the law, see his important Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Band I. Grundlegung:
Von Jesus zu Paulus (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1992).
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light disjunctions among the New Testament corpora, but find unbearable tensions ostensibly generated by developments even within a
particular corpus: one thinks, for instance, of the two volumes that
have appeared so far in Hans Hbner's Biblische Theologie des Neuen
Testaments.35
Conservative New Testament theologies, though not nearly as
skeptical and disjunctive as Hbner, nonetheless belong under this
third definition of biblical theology. The influential contribution of
Ladd, for instance, proceeds by analyzing the theology of each New
Testament corpus;36 there is little attempt at integration. The one
major exception, the work by Guthrie,37 does not really solve the
problem. Instead of working inductively from each New Testament
corpus, Guthrie selects a very wide range of New Testament themes
and tracks them down in each New Testament corpus, but there is no
final attempt at integration. And in any case, the outer boundary is
the New Testament, not the Bible.
The remaining three definitions may be introduced more briefly:
(4) Biblical theology is the theology of a particular theme across the
Scripturesor at least across the corpora of a Testament. One thinks, for
instance, of the recent essay by Elmer Martens, "Embracing the Law:
A Biblical Theological Perspective,"38 or some of the essays by Hartmut Gese.39 What makes his study a "biblical theological" enterprise
is that he pursues his chosen theme through the main biblical corpora. One thinks, too, of some of the provocative essays in the recent
collection by Moberly.40
Once again, however, there are several subcategories. The topic
or theme selected may be one that is directly treated by a large
number of biblical corporaas is the case in Martens's study. Alternatively, the topics may arise out of the categories of systematic
theologyself-evidently the case in much of Millar Burrow's 1946
"biblical theology."41 The problem becomes still more acute when
well-meaning Christians seek to determine "the Bible's view on X"
where X may or may not be something that the Bible regularly
35. Vol. 1, Prolegomena; Vol. 2, Die Theologie des Paulus und ihre neutestamentliche
Wirkungsgeschichte (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1990-1993).
36. George E. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1993).
37. Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (Leicester: InverVarsity, 1981).
38. BBR 2 (1992) 1-28
39. Those most conveniently available in English are found in his Essays on
Biblical Theology (trans. Keith Crim; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981).
40. R. W L. Moberly, From Eden to Golgotha: Essays in Biblical Theology (Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1992).
41. Millard Burrows, An Outline of Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1946).
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Third, for some of these "hot" topics, especially those where the
Bible does not directly address them at length, biblical theology may
help us establish a nonnegotiable framework before we integrate other
useful material and venture value judgments. It seems to me that that
is the path of wisdom in addressing, say, questions about home schooling and litigation. Doubtless one may begin by referring to Deuteronomy 6 for the former and 1 Corinthians 5 for the latter,75 but the
issues are surely more complex than those addressed by these passages alone, as important as they are. I am not suggesting that relatively straightforward passages should be "explained away" by vague
appeal to larger biblical themes. Rather, I am arguing that in both of
these instances (home-schooling and litigation) there is a host of related biblical themes that must be explored along the axis of the Bible's
story linefor example, the relation of the believer to the unbelieving
world, the place of the child and of the family in God's world, the constraints imposed by love and by witness, and so forth. In a culture
where even Christians suffer from rapidly increasing biblical illiteracy, it is becoming more and more important to reestablish the basic
contours of biblical thought before the details are taken up.76 The alternative is the kind of appalling proof texting that succeeds only in
domesticating the text to the current agenda.
(4) Pivotal concerns: By far the most important of these are tied to
the way the New Testament uses the Old. At long last the subtitle of
this paper comes into play: quite decidely I am offering the perspective of a student of the New Testament.
The subject is pivotal to biblical theology, of course, because it
directly addresses the diversity in the Christian canon at its most
acute point. In the last few decades an enormous amount of work
has been done on the subject.77 One thinks not least of the many
technical articles written by our colleagues Earle Ellis and Craig
Evans, or of the crucial distinction between appropriation techniques and hermeneutical axioms deployed by Douglas Moo.78 Many
75. See, e.g., Robert D. Taylor, "Toward a Theology of Litigation: A Law Professor
Looks at 1 Corinthians 6:1-11," Ex Auditu 2 (1987) 105-16.
76. It is perhaps worth acknowledging that many of our "hot" topics were instructively handled by an earlier generation in which the topic was not "hot" but in
which the biblical literacy was a good deal higher. One thinks, for instance, of the
little book by C. F. D. Moule, Man and Nature in the New Testament: Some Reflections on
Biblical Ecology (London: Athlone, 1964)written long before the modern "greens" became an influential movement.
77. For a useful survey and evaluation, cf. It Is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture
Festschrift for Barnabas Lindars; ed. D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
78. Douglas J. Moo, The Old Testament in the Gospel Passion Narratives (Sheffield:
Almond, 1983).
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continue to pursue the connections between law and gospel, or between promise and fulfillment; others fruitfully explore the nature of
typology. One of the most creative proposals in recent years is that of
Chris Wright,79 but the structure of thought he advocates is so
heavily tied to Old Testament covenantal structure that he is sometimes less convincing when he treats the new covenant.
In short, the topic is extremely complex, and the discussion rather
confusing. I would like to make three suggestions for those who think
that biblical theology, of the second and third definitions, is possible.
First, single approach proposals on how to understand the use of the
Old Testament in the New, are simply not going to work, no matter
how sophisticated. For example, Beauchamp proposes that the fulfillment of the Scriptures in Christ could be the basis of a genuinely
biblical theology. So far, few Christians would want to disagree;
the question is what he means. His method consists of finding the
human authenticity of fulfillment in the anthropological dimensions
of Speech and Body, reflecting life through tales exchanged. The
critical symbolism of the exchange is marriage symbolism on various
levels of experience: personal, social, and historical.80 However suggestive, there are too many things left out (e.g., hiddenness, sufficient
historical referent, the nature of fulfillment determined more closely
by texts) and too many things imported from alien disciplines.
Second, granted that we must fully acknowledge the enormous
wealth of ways in which the New Testament cites or alludes to the
Old, there is one particular pairing of themes which in my view has
considerable promise for enriching biblical theologya pairing by
and large left untouched in the modern literature. How is it that
the very same gospel can be said, by various New Testament writers, to be, on the one hand, prophesied in the past and fulfilled in the
present, and, on the other, hidden in the past and revealed in the
present? There has been too little reflection on the canonical and
biblical-theological implications of musth/rion and related words and
concepts. I would love to explore this with you in a preliminary way,
but I press on.
Third (and now the subtitle takes on full force), I would argue that
all Christian theologians, including those whose area of specialty is
the Old Testament or some part of it, are under obligation to read the
79. Of the various things he has penned, see perhaps especially, as a foundation
to his thought, C. J. H. Wright, God's People in God's Land: Family, Land and Property in
the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990).
80. Paul Beauchamp, LUn et l'Autre Testament (2 vols.; Paris: Seuil, 1977, 1990);
Beauchamp, Le Rcit, la Lettre et le Corps (Paris: Seuil, 1982). His complex ideas are
nicely summarized in his article, "Accomplir les Ecritures; Un chemin de thologie
biblique," 1 RB 99 (1992) 132-62.
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